Hi - I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a stable hardware platform in the 2.4 to 3.2Ghz cpu range. I tried to put mikrotik router OS on a Dell Poweredge 650 and it wouldn't go - couldn't find the HD if I remember correctly. I am using it to terminate pppoe sessions and every user gets a simple que. Currently it's on a K6 500Mhz and cpu usage is getting up to 60-70% average and peaks at 100% - I am going to need something different soon. I was wondering how it would work on a Shuttle box, they are nice and small. I also thought of putting it on a Tyan Transport GS10. It's a 1U rackmount and only 15"deeps. It will accept up to a 3.06Ghz P4. Does Mikrotik support DDR memory? Which of these CPU's would be the most stable - or does it matter. AMD Duron, Athlon, Sempron, Intel P4 or Celeron?

I went with the supermicro 5014 and am so far very happy. I used a Routerboard 44 card to provide 4 eth ports. I requested that the drivers for this system be put into Mikrotik OS, and in version 2.9 they now exist. This means I can now use the 2 on-board gig-e ports. For us it's a nice compact powerful system. Terminating over 300 PPPoE sessions with a simple queue assigned to each one is using roughly 20% cpu.

Shell I consider Sempron's PR index 2500+ as this CPU is really faster than Celeron 2.4 regarding usage in wifi routers? Or shell I look just for real CPU frequency? New generation of 64-bit Semprons 2500+ work at 1.4GHz I think, but is this fast enough as Celeron 2.4 (for example) when used in a PC running Mikrotik? I mean when you put these CPU's on similar quality boards with the same ammount of memory and other stuff.

I know about using these CPU's in normal home PC's. Then, Sempron really gives something like 2.5GHz Celeron regarding games and things like that and Celeron gives better results in brute force CPU power like DivX encoding. Here is some comparison link.

So, regarding PC's running Mikrotik, is it more important to have brute force CPU power (like Celeron and other Intel's) or to have wide range (multimedia) power (like Sempron)? Pentium 4 and pure Athlons are not an option in my case because of high price and I don't think I need so much power.

If someone has both kinds of boxes, Semprons and Celerons, please give us some numbers regarding performances.

Hmm, motherboard is probably important also. I supose nForce chipset has better bus bandwidth than Via (regarding AMD platform), and Intel and nForce should perform better than SiS and Via (regarding Intel platform), but, of course, better motherboard, more money.

At this moment, I am thinking to get either Asus P4S8X-MX (44.4 euros) with Celeron D310 2.13Ghz (56 euros) or MSI K8MM-V S754 (51.6 euros) with Sempron 2500+ box 64-bit (60.6 euros). Total price for Intel version should be 100.4 euros and for AMD 112.2 euros, but maybe I could find cheaper AMD based motherboard. I am thinking also to get non VGA-integrated boards because of more PCI slots (you never know how many NIC's you will use). Any help is appreciated.

Would you guys suggest/consider putting the supermicro boards on top of a tower? What about cooling? Intel CPU?

If it's a proper tower, we use indoor boxes on rack shelves or in cabinets in the radio room, and LMR400-900 up to the antennas. Reason being, if something goes wrong with the hardware you don't want to wait for clear weather and/or riggers to climb the tower for service.

We have Gigabyte, Asus, and Intel motherboards with Celeron & Sempron processors, CF-modules for hard disks, in typical mid-tower cases. These boxes are very solid and completely trouble-free.

Its nice to know that you have been successful using desktop cases/motherboads for your MT boxes, one question though, How long are your LMR cables to the antennas? how much power do you have on your radios? any concerns about losses? are you using any boosters / lightning arresters / grounding ?